Don't lose sight as to why this situation is a problem.

[Valisha.8650]

14 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

This is the reality of it. If you look on MassivelyOP, you have a collection of people who don't even play saying how wrong death threats are, and most highly voted comments are about how the community is salty over a patch.

They've spun it into making GW2's community look even worse. 

There's legitimate outrage: an enormous timesink of a game with fundamental, extremely longstanding balance issues is being balanced by a team of one guy who plays one specific build of one class; it's balanced based on whims and Wiki info (not experience and understanding), and community concerns are both ignored and, evidently mocked.

And the official response is "we had death threats and thats not ok".

Winner!

This, 100%

[AliamRationem.5172]

16 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

This is the reality of it. If you look on MassivelyOP, you have a collection of people who don't even play saying how wrong death threats are, and most highly voted comments are about how the community is salty over a patch.

They've spun it into making GW2's community look even worse. 

There's legitimate outrage: an enormous timesink of a game with fundamental, extremely longstanding balance issues is being balanced by a team of one guy who plays one specific build of one class; it's balanced based on whims and Wiki info (not experience and understanding), and community concerns are both ignored and, evidently mocked.

And the official response is "we had death threats and thats not ok".

Winner!

^This.

To be clear, death threats are not okay.  But this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that ANet has done a legitimately terrible job of balancing since EoD.

[Mik.3401]

The moment they started removing constructive negative criticism comments under the July update post and alter reactions from overwhelmingly confused to just likes and thanks I was like ‘I’m out’. And that’s after years of disappointments, I still had hope until that point. Such a sad end of ok reputation for a studio which used to be a pioneer. And yes I’m just still lurking here to point that out because given this whole shenanigans we witness I regret playing this game for so long.

Edited July 28, 2022 by Mik.3401

[Valisha.8650]

1 hour ago, Mik.3401 said:

The moment they started removing constructive negative criticism comments under the July update post and alter reactions from overwhelmingly confused to just likes and thanks I was like ‘I’m out’. And that’s after years of disappointments, I still had hope until that point. Such a sad end of ok reputation for a studio which used to be a pioneer. And yes I’m just still lurking here to point that out because given this whole shenanigans we witness I regret playing this game for so long.

It legit makes me sad to think how all the artists, composers, programmers, creative writers, and other hard-working employees get, whether we want it or not, included in the backlash against anet, because some tiny, handful minority of clowns treat the game balance as if it was their personal pizza order.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 minute ago, Valisha.8650 said:

It legit makes me sad to think how all the artists, composers, programmers, creative writers, and other hard-working employees get, whether we want it or not, included in the backlash against anet, because some tiny, handful minority of clowns treat the game balance as if it was their personal pizza order.

Unfortunately, it was the devs treating game balance as if it was their personal pizza order that brought us to where we are.

[Mik.3401]

3 hours ago, Valisha.8650 said:

It legit makes me sad to think how all the artists, composers, programmers, creative writers, and other hard-working employees get, whether we want it or not, included in the backlash against anet, because some tiny, handful minority of clowns treat the game balance as if it was their personal pizza order.

I agree, especially when it comes to the origonal team from 2012-2015/16. They worked so hard on this game for years.

[Bunny.9834]

On 6/29/2022 at 7:20 AM, Fueki.4753 said:

Your wording here falls a bit short. We don't genuine believe it at this point anymore. We know it.

I mean... you ain't lying. 

[JTGuevara.9018]

8 hours ago, Valisha.8650 said:

It legit makes me sad to think how all the artists, composers, programmers, creative writers, and other hard-working employees get, whether we want it or not, included in the backlash against anet, because some tiny, handful minority of clowns treat the game balance as if it was their personal pizza order.

It is sad, but they don't really have a choice in the matter. The design, marketing and business people are the ones calling the shots. Artists' talents are bound to get wasted in an game industry that WALLOWS in mediocrity, never mind downright filth. (See Diablo Immortal and Fallout76)

It's just a plain FACT that business ruins art. It's never the other way around.

Edited July 28, 2022 by JTGuevara.9018
typo

[Labjax.2465]

On 7/26/2022 at 8:55 PM, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Abusive actors be like:

 

*Does something empirically scummy*

*Gets backlash*

"Wow, how rude! I can't believe I even tried to be nice to you!"

*Unfriends anyone that doesn't agree with them*

I dont know if it is exaggerated or not, I'm not in a position to make that claim. If it is not, that's never to be defended and those people do not speak for the community or belong here.

Still, that should not be used as a shield to obfuscate the issues that led to that behavior. 

 

In general, I find video game companies have a tendency to be poor at communicating and then act super offended when it goes badly for them. And on the one hand, sometimes people do go too hard over trivial things. On the other hand, a lot of people in game communities would probably go less hard if the relationship with the studio was based on more than PR and forcible changes to something they enjoy.

I mean, personally, I'm someone who leans more on the end of being pretty accepting of changes (like in general, in life) and adapting to them. But that doesn't make it any less annoying when a game I enjoy changes something in a way that makes things notably worse for my experience. And if it can get to me, one of the more accepting type of people, I can only imagine how infuriating it can be for people who particularly don't like change.

Point being, this is a fundamental truth about change and I see game companies regularly acting oblivious about that truth, blundering about with big changes and poor communication about them. And though none of that justifies vile reactions, their shocked pikachu face levels of surprise leave me scratching my head. It's like they are repeatedly resistant to learning this point and would rather believe people are just out to hate them, and it doesn't have to be that way. There is no fundamental rule of video games which states that your changes have to result in controversy every so often. Most of it is perfectly avoidable with respectful handling of the sensitivity of the matter: communicating early and often, being thoughtful about how these things will be received, not just what it means on an abstract design level.

I know that takes work to think about, but it's work that can be done and can save some resources on panic response when something causes a controversy.